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AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

washingtonpost.com

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Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#261

Post by perlgeek »

xp84 wrote: post #119

> [EU regulations] gives people a degree of control over their personal data, including the right to ask for it to be deleted. The reason I think all-party consent laws are bad is the same reason I find the above sentence silly: If you say something out loud that is no longer your exclusive “data.” If you want to keep it secret either don’t say it, or say it under NDA or in a customary fashion such as telling a repor…

This is some very black-and-white thinking.

If you haven't grown up with every semi-publicly spoken word recorded and made searchable, you aren't used to restrict what you say to those that you are OK with being recorded.

But, even more importantly, even if you do, you might later change your mind about things.

Part as a problem is that we, as a society, don't really deal appropriately (at least in my opinion) to old recordings. If somebody said something slightly offensive 10 years ago, and it wasn't recorded, basically nobody cares. If it was recorded, there's too much outrage, considering that this was one thing of literally 100k things they said that year.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#262

Post by marcosdumay »

maccard wrote: post #171
nottorp wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part about the standup ritual is that no one talks outside standups. With async text communication channels you'll post when an issue shows up. With the standups you'll wait until the next standup and maybe forget the details until then, or forget about the issue entirely and that will lead to technical debt. > when an issue shows up Advanced usage: post proactively before you reach the task/issue. This way…

> With async text communication channels you'll post when an issue shows up You clearly work with excellent teams who don’t need this then. My experience is that a large number of people, even competent people will not post when an issue shows up and will wait for however long until an update is asked of them and then say they couldn’t do it because they’re blocked.

That's caused by daily meetings, not a reason to have them.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#264

Post by dirkc »

Each time I'm in a meeting with an AI note taker I am very tempted to prank the AI / person sending the AI. Maybe I should create a AI meeting mayhem bot that plays out some ridiculous scenario for the note taking AI to transcribe.

I can already hear the panicked phone call asking if Alice okay and how on earth could her whole house get swallowed by a sink hole without the wifi cutting out :P

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#265

Post by scott_w »

coldtea wrote: post #210
scott_w wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you can share your daily status asynchronously as well. In practice, this is harder because people don't speak up unless prodded. And on Slack, I spend a lot of time and effort prodding people for that update, whereas a stand-up takes 15 minutes, tops. Not attending stand-up is a lot more visible than silently ignoring an async update request on Slack.

> Not attending stand-up is a lot more visible than silently ignoring an async update request on Slack If a second "please respond, I need the answer now" Slack message is not enough, you have bigger problems

So add yet more process and bureaucracy instead of following tried and true management techniques of having a synchronous meeting lasting 15 minutes every morning?

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#266

Post by sokoloff »

skywhopper wrote: post #46
sokoloff wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just tell ‘em that! We had an internal RFC comment/discussion meeting on a proposed engineering standard. In that exact meeting, a dev flipped out and expressed exasperation that they weren’t asked to comment on the proposal. In the exact meeting that was one in a series of opportunities to comment on the proposal…

Did they get to read the RFC before the meeting? If they had access but didn’t use it, then this is out of line. But if they only got the RFC during the meeting when they were asked to comment, then flipping out is overboard but the feeling is understandable.

Fair Q. It was a multi-week process where the doc was published/open for written comment and then we had a series of meetings for live discussion as well. The engineer in question just completely mis-read where we were in the process and thought this was being announced as a mandate in the one particular meeting.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#267

Post by empath75 »

pj_mukh wrote: post #16
jawns wrote: post #4

I bet there are a bunch of people in upper management who hear about this phenomenon and think that employees are skipping meetings to slack off (appearing to do work but they're actually playing Mario Kart). In reality, it's more likely that they're being judged on their attendance of BS meetings, but if they attend the BS meetings, they won't be able to make the BS deadlines they're responsible for hitting. So they…

Having had been on both sides of this coin, I agree a lot of managers mis-manage meetings. But then there's those engineers who don't show up to meetings and then a month later come to you with a "I don't know how we're deciding on some of these critical product features" and I don't know how to tell them its because they skipped some meetings where they could've been part of that discussion.

> "I don't know how we're deciding on some of these critical product features"

You shouldn't be using a single channel to make critical decisions and this stuff should be documented and people should have multiple ways to be part of the decision making process.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#268

Post by madcaptenor »

falcor84 wrote: post #193
jedberg wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m convinced most meetings are to make up for poor writing skills. That's not entirely it. Some people just won't say something unless put in a setting where they are explicity asked for it. I've had meetings where I ask for a status, and someone says they are stuck on X, and they've been stuck on X for two days. And I'll ask why they didn't just ask for help. They weren't comfortable asking for help. They were on…

I predict that in "20 minutes in the future" we'll see the industry moving to AI based scrum-assistants with a scheduled daily trigger, that will reach out to each dev to have a check-in conversation and then automatically synthesize the input from everyone and update the project manager (possibly AI-based itself) with insight about how things are progressing and recommendations.

My employer literally moved to this this week.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#269

Post by Hilift »

nlawalker wrote: post #69

In my experience, at least, it's because a lot of "meetings" aren't actually meetings, they're presentations that are actually better consumed async after the fact, but historical precedent demands that everyone be invited to attend the live taping and emote and cheer politely.

I've totally sat through one of these "dry run" VP presentations before they do it before an exec audience. "All the metrics and dashboards are green". Next day: Layoffs and reapply for your job, also introducing Dopinder who will shadow your succession.

Re: AI note takers are flooding Zoom calls as workers opt to skip meetings

#270

Post by nkrisc »

coliveira wrote: post #113
singron wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sympathetic to this knowing how few people actually read their emails (and slacks etc.). If you've ever sent out a 30 second survey to your coworkers, you know what I'm talking about. But I also know people don't really pay attention in these meetings either. I feel async communication could work this way with the right cultural hygiene (e.g. consistent labeling, brevity, novelty, and relevancy), and some places…

The reason people don't read email is that companies have poisoned their communication channels. If an important email is right beside a practically junk message, it will be lost.

90% of the work emails I received were indistinguishable from spam. And they were sent by my employer.

“Did you know HR has an XYZ workshop” or “Look at what your coworkers are saying on Internal Company Social Network” (that I never once logged into). Literal spam. It’s no wonder I became completely desensitized to email notifications from my own employer’s domain.

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